Nikola Koljević

Nikola Koljević (Serbian Cyrillic: Никола Кољевић; 9 June 1936 – 25 January 1997) was a Bosnian Serb politician, university professor, translator and an essayist, one of the foremost Yugoslavian Shakespeare scholars. In 2016, Koljević was posthumously declared by the United Nations to be part of a criminal enterprise with extreme views toward Bosnian Muslims.

Nikola Koljević

Biography

Koljević was born to a distinguished merchant family in Banja Luka, then part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, (now Bosnia and Herzegovina). His elder brother, Svetozar (1930–2016), was a renowned scholar who has written extensively on Serbian epic poetry. At the first multi-party elections held in 1990, he was elected as a Serb member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In April 1992 he left the Presidency, and during the Bosnian War occupied the post of a Vice-President of Republika Srpska. He received the highest-ranking ordain of Republika Srpska, the Order of Republic with sash. Koljević was the sole person to sign the declaration on behalf of Republika Srpska approving the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina as set out in Annex 4 to the General Framework Agreement.

Koljević's son was killed in a skiing accident in 1975.

Suicide

On 16 January 1997 he tried to commit suicide by shooting himself in the head, and died a week later in a Belgrade hospital.

International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia

In the 2016 verdict against Radovan Karadžić, the U.N.-backed International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) identified Koljević as part of a Joint criminal enterprise,[1] which included Karažić. It described that Koljević was "particularly extreme in his view" and advocated for the expulsion of Bosnian Muslims in order to create homogeneity of territories, and said that it was "impossible for Serbs to live with anyone else"[2]:

...the Chamber finds that together with the Accused, Krajišnik, Koljević, and Plavšić shared the intent to effect the common plan to permanently remove Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats from Bosnian Serb claimed territory, and through their positions in the Bosnian Serb leadership and involvement throughout the Municipalities, they contributed to the execution of the common plan from October 1991 until at least 30 November 1995.[3]

Some have suggested that Koljević went into politics because he resented the fact that throughout his whole life he had to live in the shadow of his famous elder brother. Having taught Shakespeare for many years at the University of Sarajevo, his later involvement in Serbian nationalist politics had taken aback his former Muslim students, with many of whom he had remained good friends after graduating, because he had never before shown the slightest trace of prejudice.

Works

• Teorijski osnovi nove kritike, 1967
• O uporednom i sporednom, 1977
• Ikonoborci i ikonobranitelji, 1978
• Šekspir, tragičar, 1981
• Pesnik iza pesme, 1984
• "Tajna" poznog Dučića: interpretacija, 1985
• "Lamnet nad Beogradom" Miloša Crnjanskog, 1986
• Klasici srpskog pesništva, 1987
• Otadžbinske teme, 1995
• Andrićevo remek-delo, 1995
• Od Platona do Dejtona: (zapisi o državi našim povodom), 1996

References

1. Prosecutor v. Karadžić – Judgement, 24 March 2016, p. 1303–1304
2. Prosecutor v. Karadžić – Judgement, 24 March 2016, p. 1228
3. Prosecutor v. Karadžić – Judgement, 24 March 2016, p. 1300

Bibliography

• "Prosecutor vs. Radovan Karadžić – Judgement" (PDF). The Hague: International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. 26 March 2016.
• Judah, Tim (1997). The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.